


Over the fire

by hauntedpoem



Series: Maglor through the ages [1]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Baby Legolas, Before the hobbit, Character Study, Gen, Good Parent Thranduil, Maglor is a wanderer, Oropher's castle, Thranduil's A+ Parenting, moving in the caves, sharing food, sort of, subtle explosions, widowed Thranduil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 00:56:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8349853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Practically, this was an excuse to write Maglor & Thranduil & baby Legolas eating rabbit stew.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to update my other Maglor/Thranduil fic (yeah, the pwp one) but I accidentally saved an older version of it and I wasn't pleased with the result. So...  
> This happened. I hope it makes sense.  
> ~  
> Related fic *of sorts* [Trapped](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9389651)

 

He can't afford to drown in mourning. He cannot fade away, as much as the cold gray shadow pulls him in. Thranduil surveys his people and there is a burning determination in his gaze.They must leave Oropher's palace in ruin, they must take everything elvish from this place; all that is sacred must disappear. 

This is no longer their home. His son is in the arms of Galion's wife, Galenwen, who is singing sweetly to him a lullaby in old, indecipherable Nandorin. His people are fine for the time being but the losses reach deep into his heart. Men are lifting heavy weights and carrying their belongings onto rafts and then into small carriages. What is of lesser importance, they use as firewood. 

The foundation of the palace must be destroyed, and for the first time in his life, Thranduil has to ensure the destruction of something that once belonged to him, to them. It was easier slaying orcs and other fell beasts than obliterating a part of his personal history. He works shoulder to shoulder with his people. Most Silvans have disassembled their simple talans and stored the wood for later. They make fires and light the hopeless darkness of the night. Up in the trees, his soldiers scan the sky. They all dread the deepening shadow that the dragon leaves behind. As head of administration, Thranduil shares everything in the storages with them and by the time they will have reached the other side of the river and the stronghold, they would be starting a new chapter.

Now, it is almost evening and the elves are all huddled around small fires for a meal. He cradles his one-year-old son to his chest and tries not to display weakness. He cannot fail in this. He rather can't afford to fail! Out of a curtain that was once gracing the summer terrace of his suite, Thranduil has fashioned a sling to carry a sleepy Legolas around. The child stirs and Thranduil, anticipating tears and cries of discomfort, starts swaying like the gentle willows in the wind.

He keeps humming and the youngling is appeased for the moment. Carrying him in his protective wrap and preambles through the camp. Lost in his thoughts of the future, the king approaches one of the small fires. His humming imitates the innocent and ever-changing tune of a child and his hands are busy supporting his son's head upright. 

  
"There, there Leafling."

  
One thing that seems to make all this ordeal easier to go through, is the notion that the safety awaiting them once they complete this unpleasant task. He knows the stronghold would be unbreachable, infused with the magic of old and simply unwelcome to any fell creature. They are safe. At least for now. He entrusted some of his best captains with the safety of the first wave of Silvan refugees, mostly women and children and some carpenters and builders. With them, came half of the animals.

Now, he is surrounded by livestock, horses, and yapping dogs. Some elves sing into the distance as they saw a gigantic branch for the bonfire. The camp was noisy. Some were singing, some were praying, his soldiers were challenging one another with spears and swords. The few children left behind chased each other through the camp. A few maidens distributed lembas and fruits and the head of Oropher’s kitchen was giving directions over a large grill, shouting and coughing up the hot vapors. The apprentices and servants under his command watch over the roasting mutton and do their best not to burn it.

Legolas grew restless in his arms again. The smoke made his eyes sting. Thranduil was always cautious of his child's moods yet he went further towards the south part of the camp, searching for a quite place. There, the main architects and the stone masons were analyzing the blueprint of his father's legacy. They all spoke in hushed, coarse tones and Thranduil just knew. His men were restless and it was only a matter of time before they grew untrusting and uncooperative. Things were not going smoothly between them.

  
Melondir, a tall Sinda, was the head engineer of his court and upon noticing Thranduil coming towards them, he cleared the table and brought some small wooden chairs from the kitchens, probably something they would burn at the next making of the meal. the ancient elf looks resigned but nothing can erase the concerned look in his hazel eyes.

  
"It shall be done, Aran. It grieves us that we have to do this, but there is no other way now."   
"I do understand your reluctance, Melondir. Yet you and the rest of the people know better than to leave my father's palace at the mercy of Sauron's fell creatures." 

Of course, the engineers and the craftsmen understand. So do his councilors. It would make them fade to see the work of centuries be exploited and sullied by the likes of orcs. 

"They will but use it against us, our stone, our walls, our halls. We cannot allow that to happen." 

There was a moment of understanding passing between them and the engineer patted lovingly the tiny bare feet of Legolas, now hanging out of the carrying wrap.

"It will take several explosions but to completely ruin it is impossible."   
Instead of waiting for permission from his king, another engineer, Baeltos, a younger Silvan elf, joined the conversation. His eyes were frantic, his clothes were a mess and his lack of propriety disconcerting but Thranduil understood. Baeltos only wanted to help, brilliant as he was.

"On different levels and at different sequences in time but we shall use the cellars as an igniter." He spoke so fast, Thranduil thought the younger man would be foaming at the mouth. "Imagine, my king! All those empty barrels, filled with powder. Just think of it!" he grew more and more agitated. "Something that would make Gandalf jealous!"

Baeltos looked positively hysterical. "This beauty will collapse onto itself in several blinks, that's how fast is going to work!"  
He pauses for effect and then continues as passionately as if they haven't been attacked by a wrathful dragon and their queen  wasn't turned to ashes with half of her lady attendants. 

No... Thranduil cannot allow himself to go there. He will crumble and his son needs his only living parent direly. He cannot disappoint them. He has to take care of them.

"The cellars will go first, then every following level, like a tower of cards that collapses. It will be finished and we shall make sure to leave nothing. They will have nothing!"

His pale blue eyes bulge and there is madness in them. He falls silent as if caught in one of the images in his head. Melondir's hand touches the younger man's shoulder understandingly and Baeltos wakes from his trance. His wife and twins have burned to a crisp. How else could he cope with this?

“Your Majesty…” Melondir intervenes, calm and reasonable, as per usual. “It may not be possible to generate the necessary force. We should always take that as a possibility.”  
The smile that curls the corners Baeltos’ lips is deranged. Of course, he doesn't agree wit him! The plan not working to the desired effect means to him failure, loss. "It will work, it will! You shall see, you who do not believe!" 

The older engineer just smiles placatingly. It's useless to reason with madness. They've lost too much to try and make sense of it now. Thranduil wants to believe everything his sub-engineer says. Explosions and collapsing walls seem... fascinating but not enough to draw his attention. In that moment he wants to go far away, somewhere  where dragons don't attack kingdoms and kill his people, somewhere where orcs and fiends don't stalk their forests. He wants his son to be safe, he wants to pay his respects to the dead, he wants to honor the memory of his wife.

*  
Some prepare their own food, away from the boisterous courtiers and prefer it that way, it seems. Smells and smokes engulf Thranduil's tall form. The child becomes restless in his arms. He is as far south of the camp as could be deemed safe for his son. Legolas was hungry and started sucking his fingers into his mouth as if that would alleviate the burning sensation in his tiny stomach. He ate scarcely since his mother died, several weeks ago.   
As he keeps walking through the camp, Thranduil does wish for some broth, cold as it may be but it will take more than an hour to reach his tent, even though the cook has always something ready for him and his son.

He approaches the solitary man from behind. His presence should be sensed by now, given his loud steps and Legolas' needy whimpers.

  
"Shh... Leafling! Ada will find something."

The man turns his head slowly but only halfway, as if he expected the  intrusion of the king upon his small settlement. Thranduil looks at his back unrepentantly and comes closer. He has wavy, rich hair, and broad shoulders, he seems too tall to be one of the Silvans, and too dark to be one of the Sindar.

 He recognizes him as one of the men that helped carry the beams and dismember the wood for the fires. Thranduil is now so close he can see what he has been occupying himself with. With precise, skilled hands, he skins a hare and there's a string of blood trickling down his arm, heading for the rolled sleeve at the elbow. His eyes widen in bewilderment when he sees the man’s hands. They look beautiful, delicate, almost. These are not the hands of a worker, not necessarily those of a warrior. They look too noble, like a lettered man’s hands.

  
Thranduil's eyes follow it entranced and his fingers sweep at it in time, before it gets to stain the eggshell fabric with animal blood. The man stiffens slightly. It's a second's tenseness, barely noticeable. He's all sinew and tautness. He doesn’t appear strong but Thranduil knows that appearances can be deceptive and watches entranced as the elf man focuses on pulling the rabbit out of its skin in one perfect, flowing motion.  
The stranger has a handsome profile, a straight nose, and dark, curved eyebrows. Thranduil, surprisingly, does not know his name although he's seen him working hard among his citizens. He looks unusual for a Silvan. This is no Silvan. This is a Noldo through and through, and the king is in awe but tries to suppress it.

The man just finished gutting the rabbit and dropping it's useless pink entrails into the fire, while saving it's organs and dropping them into an oily pan that starts sizzling immediately. He wipes the sharp, slender knife on a rag and Thranduil cannot help but notice the intricate mithril and ivory handle. The workmanship is rare, something  he's seen in old sketches as a young elf in his father's library and only glimpsed in ceremonial daggers. His eyes linger but as if knowing what he's thinking, the man hides the knife into its inconspicuous leather sheath.

Soon, the smell of cooked meat invades Thranduil's nostrils.By the improvised fire grate lies another pan, still bubbling with what looks like stew. The man ladles some into a bowl, sprinkles green parsley leaves and hands it to Thranduil without another word. 

He is a handsome man. That’s all Thranduil can think of. How could he miss seeing him around?  
For a moment, Thranduil can't look at anything but at the exquisite architecture of the man's visage. He's not all harsh angles how one would imagine; he's darkness illuminated only by pale eyes. He has a high forehead and beautifully sculpted cheekbones, a strong jaw, enough to be deemed masculine and an expressive mouth with plump lips; an open, if weathered face. Its eternal elven youth almost mocking the long years he's roamed the earth. The eyes are scintillating, and just like the stars, they seem to always fluctuate between lightness and dimness. They turn as dark as the jagged mountain crests on a particularly stormy day. 

  
But the man doesn't sit still for long, turning away to search through his bag for something. He offers Thranduil a wooden spoon. Its end is carved like a fork. It's quite practical, Thranduil muses. he wakes up from his musings when the Noldo pushes the bowl more conspicuously towards him. It’s hot in his hands, the heat pulsing into his frigid fingers.

"Oh, thank you." He means it. The stew smells good; it's made of freshly unearthed root vegetables and brown, fleshy bark mushrooms, onions and square pieces of mutton. He spoons some into his mouth after blowing into the spoonful to cool it a bit. And it tastes good as well. The meat is succulent and the condiments make it spicy. He wonders briefly where do they come from.  
The man, half turned away from him just ladles another portion into a separate bowl and then he pours water over the remaining stew, thinning it and then runs it through a sieve, and into another bowl.  
Sprinkling the same green condiments over it, he hands it to Thranduil who watches the man at work transfixed.

"Here, for your son." 

His voice is a bit rough sounding, deep, but Thranduil can distinguish in it a musical quality, something pleasant. His skin, although pale at its origin, is now red with the proximity of the fire heat, his lips look bloodied, that's how red they are. The man eats in silence.

Thranduil has never seen an elf like that. He looks young but his eyes seem very, very old. The incongruence always makes it hard for him to guess another's age. With the recent dragon attacks he'd seen youths with old looking eyes and ancient elves with wild, unfocused eyes. He has seen light ravaged by darkness. He had seen matter destroyed by fire. He gently wakes his son and drags the spoon through the soup. 

"Come on, sweet Leafling, Eat a bit."

The man looks strangely at him. His eyes hold a harsh light that flickers violently, probably more so because of the proximity of the fire who seems to have engulfed one of the pans completely.  
Thranduil is busy trying to feed Legolas who until recently was unaccustomed to eating anything but his mother's milk and pureed forest fruits with crumbs of lembas. The child is not fussy but he is conscious that the lack of appetite is a consequence of his mother's sudden death. It's a shock added to his small universe. Legolas is fully conscious, opens his mouth and slurps at the  spoonful of soup presented to him. He mumbles incoherently and continues eating messily without paying attention to anything around him. Thranduil watches furtively the other elf who now finely chops the cooked rabbit liver and with the back of his knife's handle crushes it into a paste.

“Give this to him.” It doesn't take long for Thranduil to understand the kindness he is presented with. It's something that Legolas could easily swallow and even chew with the few teeth he now has.

"It will keep him satisfied," the dark haired elf says. It sounds dragged out, tired, indifferent even. But Thranduil knows better. He'd seen him dismembering ceilings and carrying carts with water around.

  
"Thank you. I wish he would eat more." He doesn't say anything else because everyone knows. This elf must know that his son could have died, faded with the absence of his mother. The horror of her absence.  
But he cannot think about it. Not now, at least. Legolas seems too hungry to be fussy and just swallows the meaty paste, mumbling into the spoon and occasionally calling for his Ada, while his sticky little hands want to grab on anything in his range, especially on his father's long, silver blond hair.

  
"Be good, Leafling." He admonishes but he smiles at the pale haired child who makes a mess of himself while munching on his food.

  
"You should eat as well before the meat hardens."  
The man cuts into small pieces of rabbit meat that he cooked while Thranduil was busy looking elsewhere. They eat in silence, all of them. The meat is tender, juicy and sprinkled with freshly plucked thyme, salt and black pepper. Thranduil's fingers shine with grease and so are his lips. His son grabs the presented food and out of playfulness starts returning the favour by pushing bits into his father's mouth.

  
"Ada!" He squeals excitedly as the food disappears into Thranduil's mouth, who looks at the bundle of joy attached to his chest by the wraps with nothing less than smitten adoration.  
Then, as if remembering something, Legolas scoops some more with his dirty, sticky, sweet, little fingers and darts towards the dark haired elf. He's unable to reach and push food into his mouth, though.

“Nana!”  
The other one gives Thranduil a piercing look then his eyes focus on Legolas and with seemingly long practiced skill, redirects the food back into the elfling's mouth. 

  
"Eat," he commands. Thranduil watches him intently and a bit taken aback. It seems that this strange elf could command both the Woodland king and his impatient and fussy son to eat everything he pushed in front of them. His strong, unrelenting aura is unlike any other Thranduil has seen before. He looked in fascination at the other man as he cleaned the pans and the pots with a wet rag and busied himself with night preparations.

"My name is Maglor," he spoke suddenly, in the same heavily accented Sindarin, as if anticipating the question. "I… travelled here. I reached your borders right after the Dragonfire. It was a tragedy, it shouldn't have happened. Not here." He talks faster now and his voice sounds like his old mother’s old piano, out of use, roughened by silence.“I wish I could stay here with you. At least for a while. I could help you before I travel North.”

  
"Very well," he answers back suddenly saddened.  
"I need a purpose."  
He shuts abruptly and lets Thranduil stare back at him. The elf is suddenly turning his back on him as if regretting what he just said.  
"Now that you're here, you are welcome, Maglor, he tries to be reassuring but fails, somehow. “My people need all the help they can get. Tomorrow we have to move camp," he says in the end.

Maglor says nothing. It seems that he already has decided to stay and help them after the attack. He is very quiet, very mysterious and treats words cautiously, speaking only when necessary. It's fine, by him. It's a grounded presence and Thranduil has needed that more than he likes to admit.

"Thank you for sharing your meal with us. Legolas did appreciate it. We struggled feeding him these past weeks. It's a blessing he ate as much today!" He smiles warmly and tries to catch the man's eyes while holding a content Legolas, ready to fall asleep again. 

"It was my pleasure, your Majesty” the man replies and Thranduil feels sudden warmth course through him. He doesn't need such formality between him and his subjects. Most of them simply call him Aran and is sufficient. He is here to perform a duty, to take these people to safety. That's his kingly duty. He hopes they will feast and celebrate one day, after they have settled into the stronghold.  
He bids Maglor farewell and leaves before the night falls.

*  
They watch as the tower collapses from a distance It’s not enough, though, for some parts in the structure resist. Thranduil doesn't want to look but Legolas' excitement changes his mind.

They are pretty vulnerable now, tired and depleted of resources as they are. The north of the river offers good land for crops although it's still colder here. Everybody works on turning the stronghold into an inhabitable place. Fortunately, there is plenty of space. The water is fresh and the river provides some of their food necessities. The halls sculpted into white marble offer a reprieve from the incoming autumn chill. Everything looks like crystal in these halls. Even the cellars are luminous enough, carved in the porous stone as they are. 

They use the power of the flowing water and direct it through pipes and channels. The engineers work day and night in order to come up with more sustainable designs. The architects have already worked on blueprints that would transform the stronghold into an amenable place while maintaining its natural defences. Sometimes he watches Maglor work but there is little time to address him.

Old magic and the grace of the Valar keep them secure through the waters of the enchanted river and the impenetrable forest.

*  
The plans are bold and functional above all else. Luxury is abandoned in favour of the natural beauty of the system of mountain hills and caverns. The land is worked and new trees are planted. Stables are built and houses for the animal stock. Thranduil has a large population of  Silvans and Sindar to feed and keep safe over the winter. He did not doubt it will be a harsh one, here so close to the mountains of the north. 

  
Dale and Esgaroth and also many communities of the second born are close by and he reforged alliances with them, signing treaties over trade and protection. However, he is cautious and would rather his people be more isolated and safe, than open to attacks just because it's more convenient to keep the borders open. The woodland realm is safe as long as Thranduil knows who passes his borders. He makes these impenetrable, by using the geographical position and their political advantages.

Trade is ensured by the raft elves and usually limited via the river. Soon, his population becomes self-sufficient. They produce their own wheat, they hubby and they fish. They exploit the forest and the land as best as they can and they grow most vegetables in special enclosures over the winter. The animal stock usually provides with force on the fields and offers sustenance in unkind seasons. They trade for oil, wine, and butter- these small luxuries keep the courtiers happy. Thranduil likes to have the upper hand in these trading acts though, manipulating the price to his own advantage, which also happens to be the advantage of his people. 

Sometimes, when he’s alone with a bottle of finest vintage wine, his memory drifts back, back to the incident, back to her death, back to Maglor. he thinks of little besides his kingdom these days. It took him weeks before he realized that Maglor was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> If you are curious, [this](http://www.thegourmetforager.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Rabbit-stew.jpg) is what rabbit stew looks like.  
> You should keep in mind that it's very hard to survive in the wild, especially after a disastrous event on vegetables alone. I am not endorsing anything, just saying. Vegetables are yummy and an important part of our diet but meat was more filling and nutritious, offering almost instant relief from hunger. However, due to the necessity to be thermally prepared to destroy potential parasites in the meat, I guess that veggies and roots win.


End file.
